On Becoming a Healer

Doctors and other health care professionals are too often socialized and pressured to become "efficient task completers" rather than healers, which leads to unengaged and unimaginative medical practice, burnout, and diminished quality of care. It doesn't have to be that way. With a range of thoughtful guests, co-hosts Saul Weiner MD and Stefan Kertesz MD MS, interrogate the culture and context in which clinicians are trained and practice for their implications for patient care and clinician well-being. The podcast builds on Dr. Weiner's 2020 book, On Becoming a Healer: The Journey from Patient Care to Caring about Your Patients (Johns Hopkins University Press).

On Becoming a Healer is a health podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 78 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts On Becoming a Healer, a health show with 78 episodes published.

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  Episode #77

  From East Pakistan to West Texas: What One Immigrant Doctor Gave America

  Aug 18, 202642 minS6

  Fazlur Rahman, a retired oncologist, is the author of The Temple Road , a richly evocative memoir about growing up in what was then East Pakistan, before it became Bangladesh. His second book, Our Connected Lives , chronicles several patients he cared for during his 35 years as a cancer doctor in West Texas – and his relationships with them in the rural region where he was the only oncologist. Fazlur is a gifted writer who became a beloved physician in a community that needed him. Fazlur also faced prejudice along the way, and his story is a reminder of how much America gains from those who come from seemingly far-off lands. It is an inspiration and illustration of humility, presence, compassion and joy in patient care.

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  Episode #76

  The Clinician in the Difficult Encounter

  Jul 21, 202658 minS6

  Most of us who care for patients can remember seeing a name on the schedule and feeling our heart sink. What makes some clinical relationships so difficult? Is it something about the patient—or something about the interaction itself? Dr Jeffrey Jackson has spent more than two decades studying this question. His research has shown that difficult encounters are associated not only with patient characteristics but also with physician factors, including the clinician's approach to psychosocial issues. In this conversation, we explore what his work can teach us about why encounters become difficult, how trust can gradually emerge, and why some of the patients that physicians initially dread eventually become among the most meaningful to care for. Along the way, we discuss chronic pain, personality disorders, longitudinal relationships in primary care, the role of physician self-awareness, and the difference between caring for patients and trying to control them. This episode asks what it means to remain present with patients whose suffering—and whose behavior—challenge us the most.

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  Episode #75

  Contextualizing Care: From Competency to Curriculum (BONUS Episode)

  Jun 30, 202620 minS6

  Over the past several years, contextualizing care has surfaced repeatedly on On Becoming a Healer . In 2025, contextualizing care was incorporated into new Foundational Competencies for Undergraduate Medical Education . Around the same time, co-host Saul Weiner worked with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) to develop an online course designed to teach these skills, called Contextualizing Care for the Clinician (IHI Open School). Now that the course has been added to IHI's subscription-based Open School curriculum, making it available to learners at hundreds of subscribing institutions, we thought it would be a good time to revisit several conversations from past episodes that illustrate what contextualizing care is, why it matters, and how we can teach it.

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  Episode #74

  Do Mental Illness Diagnoses Obscure More Than They Reveal?

  Jun 16, 202650 minS6

  What if many of the core assumptions of modern psychiatry are wrong? In this episode, we speak with internist and author Dr. Khameer Kidia about his provocative new book, Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Health Care for Everyone . Kidia argues that mental illnesses are often understood too narrowly through a biomedical lens and that psychiatric diagnoses may function less as explanations for suffering than as labels we apply to it. As he puts it, "generalized anxiety disorder doesn't cause anxiety; rather, anxiety causes generalized anxiety disorder." Drawing on experiences in both Zimbabwe and the United States, Kidia challenges us to reconsider how culture, inequality, migration, social isolation, debt, and political structures shape psychological distress. He discusses evidence that conditions such as schizophrenia present very differently across cultures and explores why outcomes in some lower-income countries may surpass those in wealthier nations despite far less reliance on psychiatric medications. Throughout the conversation, we return to a practical question: How should clinicians care for patients when the roots of suffering often lie beyond the reach of medicine itself? We explore how a deeper understanding of the social and political dimensions of mental health might change the questions physicians ask, the assumptions they bring to clinical encounters, and the ways they connect with patients.

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  Episode #73

  "Dire Consequences": When students do not receive appropriate accommodations on the USMLE examinations

  May 19, 202646 minS6

  <p > In last month's episode we learned that there is no evidence that time limits that impose any sort of pressure on even a small percentage of students improves test validity and that, in fact, there is ample research showing that they make tests less valid and less equitable.  </p> <p >In this episode we discuss how, despite the data, the NBME denies accommodations on the USMLE exams to over half of medical students who have a documented learning disability and are approved for accommodations at their medical school (e.g., extra time).</p> <p >We talk with a leading m...

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